by Susan J. Demas
September 30, 2009

Why, it seems like only yesterday that I was watching a couple senators ready to throw down just after state government had shut down.

That was back in 2007, when the state was drowning in $1.8 billion of red ink and tension was literally exploding on the floor of the state’s most deliberative body. There had been 10 long months of naïve leaders botching deals and holding lawmakers captive in the Capitol for a slew of fruitless all-night sessions.

Surely things aren’t that bad this time around.

Actually, for those of you keeping score at home, it’s worse. We’re now $2.8 billion in the hole. One day before the start of the 2010 fiscal year, we don’t have a budget — again. There’s less drama this time around without the threat of a big tax increase (shh … don’t tell the Tea Party folks who like any excuse to protest with comically misspelled signs). There’s also the sad fact that we’ve become accustomed to our dysfunctional government.

You, dear reader, know what I don’t as I write this prior to “tonight’s” midnight budget deadline — if lawmakers resorted to a marathon session, if we have a budget, if we have a continuation budget, if the governor vetoed any pieces of the budget, etc. What I can guess from past experience is that the process was messy and I had to invest in a few espresso shots to pull me through.

Days after the ‘07 shutdown, I wrote a column titled, “Readers deserve better government reporting,” bemoaning the lack of Capitol coverage. That wasn’t true during the final act — Lansing’s streets were littered with satellite trucks from across the state and country. No one can resist a train wreck, and back then, Michigan was a trendsetter for state budget woes. Thanks to the global recession, almost every state is now slashing programs and many are hiking taxes. California is the new queen of budget chaos after thrashing through a $39-billion deficit this summer.

But I argued that the media needed to do a better job in covering policy throughout the year — not just when government grinds to a halt:

“You deserve to read how budget cuts and higher taxes affect your life — how much you pay, how much you gain. … You deserve to read about bills when they’re introduced, not after they’re law — from HPV vaccinations to pop-up tax reforms — so you know what your lawmakers are up to in Lansing and can be involved in the process.”

Doing so, however, requires newspapers and TV and radio stations to actually have reporters covering the Capitol. So how’s that going? Well, in the two years since I wrote that, Booth Newspapers liquidated its Lansing bureau aside from Peter Luke (and adding my columns and blogs on mlive.com), The Detroit News fired bureau chief Charlie Cain and his three decades of experience, and the Associated Press decided against filling a Lansing vacancy. The two local papers for which I periodically covered the Capitol in years past — the Jackson Citizen Patriot and the Battle Creek Enquirer — have barely bothered with state government since I left.

It’s rare to see anyone besides the political newsletters — Gongwer and MIRS (for which I work) — covering any legislative committee meetings or even House and Senate sessions.

Little wonder, then, that polls demonstrate Michiganders have a fundamental misunderstanding of how state government functions. When asked what we should cut to close the $2.8-billion deficit, there was one clear answer in a July EPIC-MRA poll: slash the legislature! The pollsters gently reminded voters that the entire legislative budget was only $116 million and essentially asked them to try again. In that survey, as in a subsequent one in September, respondents showed little appetite for cuts anywhere, especially to education, police and local governments.

Still, more than half of respondents to a Market Resource Group (MRG) poll last month would rather see the government shut down than endure a tax increase. Why not, when most people have no idea what it takes to run the government and balance a budget.

A more robust and policy-focused media would, hopefully, educate a disconnected public. Requiring civics in school also would get my vote.

But there is a fundamental problem here for reporters. Informing the public of this budget process has been a daunting task because 99.5 percent of the debate has taken place behind closed doors. Gov. Jennifer Granholm has been the biggest proponent of that idea, with her staff repeatedly declaring that the governor “will not negotiate the budget in public.”

Well, pardon me, but why the hell not? Y’all are public officials drawing very nice salaries. The citizens who provide for them, as well as the tax revenue that fuels our $43-billion budget, deserve to know how you’ve decided to spend that money.

Right now, we reporters do our best to ferret out any information at these top-secret sessions, like revealing Granholm’s list of $1.1 billion in tax hikes and loophole closures a month before she finally went public. But to a large degree, we’re stuck covering the public meetings after everything’s been decided privately. And this year, those are taking place just days — and even hours — before the budget deadline.

That doesn’t give the public much time to digest such complex actions.

Four years ago when I was covering local government up in Saginaw, one of my beats was the inner suburb of Carrollton Township — home of the four-hour, biweekly township board meeting. Everything was on the agenda — and I mean everything, down to the malfunctioning office copier. Eager residents were always on the lookout for violations of the Open Meetings Act, like if a majority of the board went to the john without posting public notice.

But with our state government, leaders decide how to spend billions of dollars far away from the public eye and glint of Michigan Government Television cameras, with only the occasional lobbyist there to advise.

There’s a lot of prattle from both parties about transparency nowadays. Sad that when it comes to the core constitutional function of the legislature, that’s a cruel joke.

Susan J. Demas is a 2006 Knight Foundation Fellow in nonprofits journalism and a political analyst for Michigan Information & Research Service.